If You Follow Me (26 page)

“You are invited,” Sakura says brightly. “Tonight Miss Marina will make sukiyaki.”

“This
is why you wanted us to meet you here?” Miyoshi-sensei says to Sakura in Japanese. “You said you had something you wanted to talk about in person. Something you couldn't discuss over the phone, that it was too important.”

“I wanted to surprise you,” Sakura says.

Miyoshi-sensei's body is stiff next to mine. His hand shakes as he reaches for his cigarette, then reconsiders and puts it back in the ashtray.

“I don't get it,” Carolyn says.

But I do. I was right about the setup, just not about who we'd been set up with.

“So,” Sakura says, “are you free tonight, Mister Joe?”

“Sure,” Joe says. “I'd love to have dinner with the two of you.”

“Three,” Sakura corrects him.

“Nani
?” Miyoshi-sensei says. What?

“Love connection!” Lone Wolf howls. I hadn't realized that he followed us in here too, along with his cameraman. He traces a heart in the air with his fingertip, then pretends to shoot a bow and arrow first at Miyoshi-sensei and then at me. He sits down next to me, shov
ing me up against Miyoshi-sensei. “So, Hiro-kun,” he says, “you still like foreign girls,
ne
?” He wiggles an eyebrow and yowls, “mrow!”

“Yamero
,” Hiro mutters. Cut it out.

“Don't be so shy,” Lone Wolf chides him. “It's not sexy.”

Miyoshi-sensei peels the lid off a plastic thimble of cream. “Tonight is not so convenient for me, Miss Marina.” He dumps the cream into his coffee, watching the undulating pattern unfold. “But I'm sorry to miss your birthday celebration.”

“That's fine,” I say. “Really, don't worry about it.”

“Kowai
?” Lone Wolf goads him. Are you scared? He reaches an arm behind me to muss Miyoshi-sensei's hair. Miyoshi-sensei slaps his hand away, then stands up abruptly. There is an awkward shuffle as both Lone Wolf and I stand up to let him out. “
Faito
!” Lone Wolf cries as Miyoshi-sensei strides across Mister Donuts, leaning forward, both hands deep in his pockets. “
Faito! Faito!
” In the ashtray, his unsmoked cigarette burns out, leaving behind a long column of ash that holds its shape for a second and then disintegrates.

 

While Joe and I sit on the
gokiburi
couch, Carolyn kneels on the floor and fills three Mickey Mouse beer steins with sake. We're both wearing the sheer white robes that went under our kimonos. As she leans forward, she exposes the swell of her breasts, the freckles smattered between them. I see Joe pry his eyes away.

“You swear you didn't know that was a setup?” I ask him once more.

“Give me a modicum of credit,” he says. “I wouldn't try to come between the two of you. Not that I wouldn't enjoy doing just that.” I roll my eyes, but I can't bring myself to really care about the innuendo, which he made almost dutifully, as if he had to play to our expectations. I wait for Carolyn to tell him that there is no “two of
us” anymore, but she stays quiet, drinking her sake as if it was water and she was parched.

“Poor Hiro,” Joe says as he pulls from his pocket a tin containing the first joint I've seen since leaving the States, fat and fragrant. Carolyn tells him that we can't smoke pot in the house, that the neighbors might smell it. This is just an excuse. She never wants to smoke pot. She says that it has no effect on her, that she hates the way it turns people into philosophers of the obvious. I used to enjoy it for that very reason. My boyfriend Luke and I got stoned all the time. I think of what she said in our fight, how I never lose control. When Joe suggests that we go to the beach and smoke the joint there, I jump at the chance.

It's foggy out, humid and pleasantly warm, a true spring night. Moonlight filters through the haze, casting its silvery glow across the sand. We all take off our shoes and walk to the edge of the water, letting the waves play over our toes. The water is no longer bone-chillingly cold. It holds the memory and promise of summer. Ahead of us a group of sandpipers runs to keep their distance, gathering in a huddle, each perching on one leg. Joe offers Carolyn the joint and she doesn't say no. She doesn't like to be the prude, the goody-goody. As he lights it for her, he stands closer than necessary, shielding her from a nonexistent wind. She barely inhales.

“You won't feel anything like that,” Joe says. “Have you never smoked before?”

“Of course I have,” she says. “Lots of times.”

“You've got to do it like this,” he says, sucking so hard that the rolling paper crackles and the cherry comets toward his fingers. He hands the joint back to her and she takes another shallow hit before thrusting it at me. I inhale deeply, enjoying the searing sensation at the back of my throat, the immediate light-headedness as I bend over, hacking. “That's more like it,” Joe says, thumping my back. “If
you don't cough, you won't get off.” I try to give the joint back to Carolyn but she shakes her head. As we walk down the beach, chasing the sandpipers, Joe and I pass the joint back and forth, trailed by a pungent cloud of smoke.

“Why ‘Poor Hiro'?” I say.

“What?” he says.

“You said ‘Poor Hiro.' Like being set up with me would be so awful.”

“That's not what I meant,” he says. “It's just a lot of pressure, innit? Being the mayor's son, trying to live up to the legend. His dad was a local hero, bringing the plant to Shika, making jobs so that people had a reason to stay here. But now that there's a petition to shut it down and he's got cancer, no one knows how to treat him anymore. I think everyone's embarrassed. They wish he'd just disappear, which he will do soon enough.”

“There's a petition to shut the plant down?” I ask, wondering how Joe knows so much more than I do when he doesn't even live here anymore. Then I remember that he stays with the Ueno family whenever he visits. He has never had to cook a meal for himself.

“Haven't you seen those women with the clipboards outside Mister Donuts?”

“I thought they were
gomi
police.”

“Mothers against nuclear power. They've got a lot of local support and national attention. That's why it's so important to Hiro that this American mayor is coming to Shika, and why he asked Lone Wolf to come with his camera crew. He wants Shika to get on TV for something good, so that his father can be a hero one more time.”

“That's sweet,” I say.

“Do you really think his dad wanted to set the two of them up?” Carolyn asks, sounding deeply skeptical.

“He'd have to be pretty desperate,” I say sarcastically.

“I only meant that you're not Japanese.”

“But everyone knows how much Hiro likes you,” Joe says.

“He does?” Carolyn and I both say at once.

“Sure,” Joe shrugs. “But it's irrelevant, isn't it? He knows he doesn't stand a chance.”

“What I want to know,” I say, feeling the heat of Carolyn's stare even in the darkness, “is why Sakura wanted to set the two of you up.”

“I guess she wants me out of the way,” Joe says.

“Out of whose way?” Carolyn asks.

“Noriko's,” I guess.

“The librarian?” Carolyn says. “I forgot you used to date.”

“Very casually.” Joe takes another drag of the joint, then passes it to Carolyn who only pretends to smoke before handing it to me. “Still, you're probably right,” he says. “Sakura must be worried that I'll try to interfere, ruin her match with the dentist. I really should try to keep her from making the biggest mistake of her life.”

“You're such a player,” I tell him. “If Noriko wasn't getting married, you wouldn't even be thinking about her right now.”

“What makes you such an expert on me?” he says.

“Because you're a typical guy,” I say. “You only want what you can't have, and once you've got it you don't want it anymore.”

“What do I have?” he says.

“Whatever you want,” I say.

“You don't know everything,” he says, suddenly dead serious in a way I've never heard him before. “You don't know the half of it.”

“I know that when you sneeze, someone gets a Kleenex out to wipe your nose.” I have actually seen Sakura Ueno do this. Joe closed his eyes like a little child and let her wipe his face. “When you make a mess, it's cute,” I say. “When you throw a bag of trash in the wrong can, the whole town doesn't talk about it for months. You have no idea how easy you have it here, just because you're a guy.”

“Maybe,” he concedes. “But I didn't always have it so easy.”

“Well then,” I say, “if I were you then, I'd never leave Japan.”

“I know,” he says. “I'm not planning to.”

“Really?” Carolyn stops walking. “Never?”

“Look,” he says, “I'll spare you the sad story of my childhood, how when my parents split up, they fought over which one had to keep me, how most of the kids in the town where I grew up never make it to London for a weekend, let alone foreign shores. Let me just say that you don't know how hard it was to get out of there, how many people said I never would, or what I'm willing to do so I don't have to go back. I will go from school to school teaching English like a traveling salesman. I'll dress like a banana in a pudding ad and say ‘yum yum' a thousand times if that pays the rent. I haven't got much, but I do want to keep what I've got. And I do know how good I have it here.”

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly, looking at Carolyn. She picks up a huge strand of kelp, holds the bulbous end and whips it against the sand. Joe offers her the joint and she refuses. “Why did you say that Hiro knows he doesn't stand a chance?” I ask Joe, at last, to change the subject and fill the silence.

“Because of you and Carolyn, of course.”

“But he doesn't know about me and Carolyn.”

“Well I'm sure he has his suspicions.”

“Maybe, but the only way he could know for sure is if you told him.”

“Roight…” Joe makes his sorry-looking face. “It's somewhat possible that I might conceivably have let the information slip a while back.”

“You asshole!” I say. “I can't believe you did that!”

“I was only trying to spare him the humiliation of asking you out.”

“What?” I say. “When?”

“Over the holidays. We went out for a cheery Christmas pint,
and he asked, ever so casual like, whether you were available, if you had a ‘
raba.
' The way he put it, ‘lover,' not ‘boyfriend,' I figured he knew. But he seemed quite shocked when I told him about you and Caro. Shocked and a bit dejected.”

“I can't believe you told him,” I say again. I feel the water suck back under my feet, the wet sand sliding beneath me.

“I can't believe you care so much,” Carolyn says. “Unless you like him and you're pissed that Joe ruined your chances.”

“That's not the point,” I say.

“Oh my God,” she says. “You do like him. Well what's stopping you? You're a free woman. You can do whatever you want.”

“What?” Joe says. “What do you mean?”

“There is no two of us anymore,” I say. “We broke up.”

“Oh,” he says, after a moment. “I'm sorry.” He actually does sound sorry, which for some reason makes me angry. I don't know why he gets to me, or why I always want to provoke him. It's like an itch where the more you scratch it the worse it gets. It's like he's every guy who has ever let me down. I know this isn't fair, but I can't help it. Joe pulls a second joint from a tin and hands it to Carolyn, who shakes her head, so he passes it to me instead.

“Do you want to go home?” I ask.

“No,” she says.

“Are you upset?”

“No,” she says again. “Why should I be?”

“Come on.” I try to give her the joint. “It's my birthday. Let's try to have fun.”

“You two have fun,” she says. “I hate smoking pot. I never feel anything.”

“You just have to hold it in,” I say.

“You're the expert,” she says drily.

“I can show you how it's done.”

“Oh please,” she says. “May I have a lesson?”

And suddenly I feel pissed at her too. I'm not the one who wanted an open relationship, the one who said that real desire shouldn't be pinned down, attached to only one person. I want to prove something—I'm not sure what—so I take another drag, sucking as much smoke in as I can before I grab the back of her head, press my lips to hers and exhale into her mouth. When she tries to pull away I grip the whorl of hair at the nape of her neck and hold on tight, keeping my lips mashed to hers when she coughs. She struggles, her teeth banging against mine, her tongue muscular and sharp. It's the dark side of our first kiss, fueled not by passion but resentment. But apparently we put on a good show because when we break apart Joe says, “I've never seen you two kiss before. That was lovely.” His voice sounds weird, choked and husky.

“That wasn't a kiss,” Carolyn says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn't have watched.”

“I can show you a real kiss,” Carolyn says, reaching for his hand.

There is an odd relief in seeing the thing you dreaded made real. Dread is almost always worse than the thing itself, and then it's over. As I watch her kiss him, wedge her leg between his, bite his lower lip, then pull back to trace it with the tip of her tongue, I'm not sure what to do. She kisses me the same way—her signature move, apparently. I'm standing there frozen when she reaches for my hand and pulls me closer. She stops kissing Joe and begins kissing me. It's the most ardent kiss we've exchanged in months, but it feels like acting. As she slides her hands inside my robe, over my waist and up the sides of my breasts, I feel like the girls in a porno, making out for the benefit of some guy. Joe's expression is at once lusty and sheepish. He looks like he's watching a porno. Adding to the effect, a wave crashes over us, soaking our kimono underclothes and sticking them
to our bodies. We gasp and break apart, drenched and panting. Then Carolyn reaches for Joe's hand, pulls him to me and backs away. It's like musical chairs. Musical lips. There are so few ways to do this, so few combinations for just two pairs of lips, two tongues, two sets of hands. To keep it interesting, you have to keep switching partners I guess.